


He lives in you

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Genderswap, I'm just not sure yet of which ones will be relevant, Incest, M/M, MTF character, Multi, Ori is the bitchmaster, Trans Characters, and same for the tags I'll add them as necessary, canon ending, ftm character, more pairings to be added as they appear in the fic, we were friends in a past life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life sometimes brings to you people so amazing that you feel as if you know them already.<br/>Sometimes, that's more than a feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alckalin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alckalin/gifts).



> I blame this on Alckalin. It's her fault. It's all her fault.  
> I regret nothing.
> 
> There's no real plot behind this, it's just an AU we came up with. (if Bastards was "how much angst can we put in a single AU" then this is "how many modifications can we bring to the story and still have it linked to the actual story")  
> Probably going to just be ficlets, with no chronological order of any sort. yay.  
> To be updated irregularly, as usual.

The book wasn’t hers. She wasn’t sure _whose_ it was, really, though she half suspected it belonged to that huge girl without hair who sometimes came to see Nora when Dolly wasn’t home. The two of them always spent a lot of time in Nora’s room, and sometimes the girl would forget things, like a sock, or a bra.

Or a book.

Ollie was just six, but she’d been reading for more than a year, and she devoured books at a speed that always amazed Dolly. She’d done the same with that book, though it had a few hard words in it. She didn’t understand everything, but she got the general idea well enough. It felt like she couldn’t have stopped reading even if she’d tried.

She’d laughed when she’d first read the name Ori on paper, and something in her mind had gone pop.

This is me, she thought. This is a book about me.

I hope I get a happy ending? she wondered as she kept reading.

It took her many days to read the book, and most of it made her sad, though for reasons she didn’t always understand. She always cried when she read the names of Kili and Fili, and it was stupid, really, because these two were the most fun, always joking and saying silly things, and they were her favourite, along with Thorin and Bilbo... though they gave her that bad feeling in her chest too.

She wondered if it was a normal thing for grown-up books. She’d often heard Dolly talk about how she’d cried reading that thing, even though she was smiling when she said it, as if crying was a good thing.

Crying didn’t feel good at all, though.

Not when she read of how Fili and Kili and Thorin died.

She cried for days, throwing the book away and refusing to read any more of it. It wasn’t fair that they had died, not when they were so nice and kind and brave and beautiful and amazing, not when they’d just finally had what they had wanted so much.

She cried and cried, and wished she’d never found that book.

She cried, and tried to forget about what had been her life, once upon a time.


	2. bitches love foreigners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ori has a certain success abroad.

**Keelan**

She’d put an ad online to find a new roommate, after the last one had left. It had all the usual boring things, and then Keelan had decided to add “lgbtq+ preferred”, just because she remembered how difficult it had been for her to find a place at first, when she was afraid she might get beaten up by a roommate discovering “what she really was” as people liked to put it.

She’d had a few visits, some nice, others less.

And then he’d arrived.

The cutest boy she’d ever seen, the sort whose picture one might find in a magazine (though he might have been a bit short to be a model), with a gorgeous smile and a slight accent to die for.

“I am Ori,” he introduced himself. “I come here to teach, to do conversation in university, for my language, and also to learn.”

“Learn what?”

“What I can,” he replied with a disarming smirk. “I am not difficult. What I can, I learn. In university, I learn cinema, but most things, you don’t learn in school. Always I want to learn, everything in life, everywhere.”

Oh, there were a thing or two Keelan would have loved to teach him.

She hoped he wasn’t gay.

It would be such a waste if he only liked boys.

“Well then, that’s a philosophy I can only agree with,” Keelan said. “Now, about living here... Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other, don’t you think?”

Ori grinned. “Sherlock Holmes. I like too. Worse about me... Sometimes, I am working hard, I forget to eat, I get cranky. Also, I am not good around other people, I do not like. And I do not like loud music, not at all. Bad for me, sometimes it makes me cry. It is not a problem, and it is nothing bad, you do not worry, but sometimes it happens, you should know.”

“Fair enough. Well, I’m messy, and I have very irregular work hours, so I will sometimes watch tv at three in the morning. And I have a brother who’s not really aware that this is my flat, not his, so he tends to come whenever he feels like it. He’s a very decent guy, and he won’t bother anyone, but he’ll be _here_ , you know?”

“I have two sisters at home. I know. What else?”

“That’s good for a start, isn’t it? Now, let me show you around. The free room’s that way.”

It was strange, how _easy_ it was to be around Ori, to talk to him, to joke with him. It had been ten minutes, but it almost felt as if she’d always known him. She promised to call him as soon as she’d decided on a new flatmate, but the choice was already made.

And the choice was him.

 

**Troy**

_“Hello mister Durin. Love what your jeans do to your ass today._ ”

Troy Durin jumped in surprise at the foreign words, and turned to find a young man behind him, smiling at him innocently.

“Hello... Ori, is that it?” Troy said, knowing perfectly well what the boy’s name was. “What did you just...”

“Trouble switching languages in morning,” the boy mumbled, blushing. “I said, your jeans, I like them. Very nice.”

“Thank you. They’re a present from my brother, he’s the one with good taste in clothes in the family.”

Ori nodded. “Very good taste. _You look so fuckable in these, it shouldn’t be allowed_. Very nice. You have lecture this afternoon, yes?”

“For the Third year Licence, yes. We’re doing the Ring War at the moment. But you’re not in third year, are you?”

Ori shook his head, and Troy wasn’t surprised. The boy didn’t even look old enough to be in first year, to be fair. He looked barely fifteen, small and young and soft in the middle and impossibly gorgeous.

It was a good thing that Troy was a serious, respectable teacher in that university, with a strong personal policy against sleeping with students, or he’d have been tempted.

Even like that, he was tempted.

“Ah, I must need to go,” Ori claimed, looking at his watch. “It is great pleasure always, talking to you. I try to come listen to you this afternoon! History, it is much better when you talk about it.”

Troy smiled at that. His lectures were rather popular, he knew it, but it was oddly pleasing to have the boy agree with that general opinion.

“Then I hope to see you then, Ori.”

The boy grinned shyly, and ran away.

Troy wondered, and not for the first time since the beginning of the year, just how much trouble he could get in for dating a student after all.

 

**Filip**

_“Hi, everyone. My name is Ori, and I’m here to help you develop your conversation skills by talking with a native speaker. Namely, me. Lucky you, you’ll have me all to yourselves one hour every week. Hope you don’t mind sharing?”_

There were a few sniggers, and Filip grinned.

This was, and by far, the cutest language assistant he’d seen in his time at university.

And if he wasn’t into men, then Filip was the king of Erebor.

_“Let’s start by introducing ourselves, hm? How about you, with the cute hairband?”_

Probably was into girls too, but that just meant more possibilities. Filip didn’t know about the rest of the class, but he _loved_ sharing.

Oh, it was going to be a fascinating year.

One hour a week wasn’t much to work on, but Filip had succeeded with worse odds.


	3. pirate princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When little Fili and Kili play together, there are a few recurrent elements to their games

“Mam’s gonna kill you if you spoil her dress,” Filip warned his brother.

“Not a dress, it’s just a top,” Keelan corrected, adjusting the straps as well as he could. “And she doesn’t like this one, ‘cause uncle Fred said it makes her look like an exotic dancer and it made her angry and now she hates it, so I can have it.”

Filip shrugged. That sort of made sense.

“It’s still long enough to be a dress on you, though.”

“That’s the point. You said you wanted to play at being James Bond. Well, you can’t have a Jamed Bond without a girl, that’s what uncle Fred said the other day. So you be Bond, and I be the girl, and we gonna save the world together.”

“Save it from what?”

“from... from... from a dragon!”

Filip sniggered. “There’s no dragon in Bond. It’s all spies and guns and people with a lot of money.”

“But I like dragons,” Keelan grumbled. “Can’t we play Bond AND have dragons? A big, big red one, and it took our home, and now we’re going to fight it to get it back, and we’ll get hurt terribly and die in horrible suffering, and it’ll be so fun!”

It had been Keelan’s obsession for the past two years. _Dragons_.

Dresses and dragons, actually. Preferably the two at once. And usually, Filip was forced to play the dragon, while Keelan was a prince, or a poor damsel in distress... who kicked the dragon’s ass if his brother wasn’t careful enough. It often ended with torn clothes and bruises and their mother yelling at them for being horrible little terrors and uncle Fred laughing and teaching them how to fight better.

“There’s no dragon in Bond,” Filip still insisted, determined to have things done the right way for once. “And you can’t be the girl, you’re a _boy_.”

“Girls have nicer clothes, and I do what I want. It’s my game. If you don’t like it, go play somewhere else, and I’ll get miss Myrtle to do Bond instead of you.”

Filip huffed angrily. Being replaced by a horse plushie was not a nice idea, but he wanted just one game without a dragon. He didn’t like dragons. They were boring and childish and fake and just a tiny bit scary, and they gave him nightmares at night.

“No dragons. And I’m tired of always dying, anyway. Why do we always die in your games?”

“‘Cause it’s fun,” Keelan explained with a firm little nod. “It’s how it happens, right? You do great things, and then you die.”

“Wouldn’t it be more fun and then live and have people love you and be a hero?”

Keelan considered the idea for a moment before shrugging.

“We can live if you want, but I want a dragon. Please?”

“It’s the dragon, or the dress,” Filip negotiated. “You can’t be pretending two things at once, it’s too much.”

“Then I’m playing with Myrtle!”

“No you’re not, Myrtle’s mine! Go play with your stupid dragon plushie, and stop stealing my toys, you... you girl!”

That, of course, was the wrong thing to say: Keelan threw himself at his brother, pulling his hair while Filip did his best to push him away. It was a rather nasty fight, as far as their fights were concerned (there was a fair amount of biting involved, and their mother’s tunic was ruined and beyond repair, but it had been _fun_ , and Filip said as much when they calmed down.

“I’m still angry,” Keelan replied dryly. “You called me a girl. I’m not a girl. Girls are stupid and weak and they don’t fight. And they have _cooties_.”

“Mam doesn’t have cooties. And Alicia from down the street isn’t weak, she does judo.”

“Girls are still stupid. I know. Daniel always say people are girls when they do stupid things, and then with his friends they all laugh... And it’s bad enough they say I’m a girl, so if you do it too... but why are girls the only one who get all the _nice_ stuff anyway?”

“What nice stuff?”

“Dresses and long hair and dolls.”

Filip thought about it for a moment.

“You got dolls too. And long hair.”

“Action Man aren’t _dolls_ ,” Keelan protested. “And… and girls get to do stuff like dance, and they don’t have a… a thingy down there. It’s stupid and I don’t want one. I wanna wear nice dresses and be a princess.”

“You’re not quiet and nice enough to be a princess,” Filip said. “You’d be more like… like a pirate or something, ‘cause you like to fight and stuff.”

“I’ll be a pirate princess then,” Kili retorted defiantly. “I’ll kick ass and look pretty.”

Filip took a moment to think about it. It sounded like a decent career plan, as far as he was concerned. He personally wanted to become a spy, at the moment, because you got nice cars and always won in fights, but that might change. Just the year before, he wanted to be a king, after all.

“Okay, you’re a pirate princess. You’re gonna need a crew though.”

“You’ll be my crew. And uncle Fred, ‘cause even if he’s old, he’s fun and he knows cool stuff. I might ask Alicia too, because she fights good. But not Daniel. He’s a butthead.”

“Fine. D’you wanna go ask Alicia now? Only, her moms make great cookies, we could go steal them. Then we’d be a proper pirate crew.”

“Can I keep the dress on?”

“ _Duh_. How _else_ can people know you are a princess?”

Keelan grinned.

Pirate Princess.

Now that sounded like something nice to be.

 


	4. the power of a name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ori knows his name.  
> The trouble is convincing others that it's the only name he can bear.

“But darling, Ori isn’t a _real_ name.”

Ori bit his lip. He had expected that, but he didn’t have any way to explain it.

Everything else had gone… surprisingly well. Dolly had taken things fairly well, even if she’d freaked out a little and asked if she had done something wrong, if it was because his father had never been around, if he’d missed a male influence that much… until Nora had snickered, because Dolly had asked the exact same thing when she’d announced that she preferred girls.

Nora who had been very great with it, and had offered to help him meet other people like him, if he wanted advice and help for his transition. Lin, who had also been there, had just smiled and nodded.

But his name was a problem for his sister and mother. Because as far as they were concerned, Ori wasn’t a real name.

Only, real or not, it was his name. He knew it. Had known it for years, since he’d first read it in that book that told their stories, and it would have been a lie to pretend he wasn’t Ori, just like it would have been a lie to pretend he was a girl.

He was Ori, and Ori was him.

He just didn’t know how to make them see it.

“It sounds like something out of a book,” Nora pointed out with a pout. “People won’t take you seriously if you have a made up name.”

“It’s not made up,” Lin noted.

The other three stared at her in surprise.

“It’s not,” she insisted calmly. “It’s a historical name… not very common maybe. But it’s a name. There was a famous Ori around the time of the War of the Ring.”

Dolly grumbled something about it still not being much of a name if no one had been called that in two thousand years. Nora tried to tease Lin, wondering when she’d become so good at history, since they used to skip classes together in high school.

Ori said nothing, and neither did Lin, but the look they exchanged was saying it all. It said that it really had been Lin’s book that he had read, so many years ago. It said that she too remembered that life that had been theirs, once. It said she also remembered all the things that had gone wrong, all the ways they had been hurt, all the bad decisions they’d made. It said she remembered it wasn’t the first time she was in love with Nora, but this time around she wouldn’t lose her for stupid reasons. It said she remembered that Ori and her had been friends once, and suddenly he realized that she had so often taken his defence, especially when there had been that problem with the drums…

That look said many things, and Ori suddenly understood that he wasn’t alone, that there was someone else like him who knew.

“I am Ori,” he said again, and his voice didn’t waver this time. “That’s my name. That’s who I am.”

And there must have been something in face that told them that it wasn’t up for discussion, because Dolly and Nora suddenly stopped protesting. They grumbled a bit of course, because that was what they did… but they agreed, and started talking about the ways to make that his legal name, and how to explain the teachers so that he wouldn’t have to pretend in school anymore.

Lin smiled at him, and Ori smiled back.

He had thought until then that the memories of that other life where a curse, something to taunt and torture him.

But there had been good things in his life back then. There had been Dwalin.

And now, there was Lin.


End file.
